“The proposal presented by the institutions in Brussels yesterday, Wednesday, contains extremist positions that cannot be accepted by the Greek government. They do not even correspond to the changes that have been accepted by the Brussels Group!” it said referring to negotiators.

“They haven’t taken a step back independently of the fact that over the past four months the two sides had converged on reforms which the Greek government included in its own proposal.”

Did creditors ultimately want a mutually beneficial solution, the government statement asked.

“If these proposals were accepted it would continue the tragic mistake of the [previous] government of Samaras/Venizelos which lead the country to the strategic impasse of austerity.”

Greece has moved closer to default and possible exit from the eurozone after telling the International Monetary Fund it would not be making a debt repayment of €300m (£219m) due on Friday.

A crisis that has been going on for more than five years entered a new phase when Athens surprised the IMF by saying it intended to bundle up four payments in June totalling €1.6bn and make them all at the end of the month.

The move came as the Greek government reacted angrily to what was seen as an ultimatum from its creditors – including the IMF – that demanded further austerity and unpopular reforms to VAT, pensions and wage bargaining as the price for €7.2bn in fresh financial help.

Although Greece’s financial position has become increasingly serious in recent months, Athens had the ability to make the €300m payment and the country’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, gave the IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, an assurance earlier this week it would be made on time.

Asked about the repayment due on Friday, Lagarde told reporters: “The payment had been honoured and will be honoured,. I think his words were, ‘Do not worry,.’ I’m confident that will continue to be the case.”

Instead, the decision to delay payments appears to be a show of defiance by Athens against what it sees as unacceptably harsh terms being demanded by its creditors. This increases the chances of Greece defaulting on its debts, losing the support for its weak financial sector from the European Central Bank, and eventually being forced to leave the single currency.....

Athens sources are telling us that the Bank of Greece is still waiting for a response from the IMF to the news that it will be bundling this month’s payments.

“The Bank expects the reply to be positive as there is a precedent,” said one well-placed insider.

“We have enough for the payment but Tsipras wants to save up for salaries and pensions.”

Analysts this evening said the decision to miss the loan installment was also motivated by Tsipras’ determination to look as if he is playing tough. “It is aimed purely at internal consumption, not foreigners,” Christos Memis, chief executive of the news portal Protagon told me this evening

. “He is dramatising things deliberately to show Greeks he is putting up a robust defense. Come mid-June he will accept the deal. At some point he will get rid of the hardliners in his party and move to the centre left who voted him into office. That is the plan.”

But that’s a risky game.

The prime minister, who is expected to address Syriza’s steering board on Friday, is facing heavy pressure from hardliners to default. “Rupture [from the EU] has become the necessary solution,” the Left Platform, which represents the party’s militant wing, opined on its website.

It added:

“Developments on the level of negotiations have shown in the most emphatic way that the so-called “institutions” are aiming for an agreement of devastation for the Greek people and the country, immovable in the logic [of pursuing] the neo-liberal model of austerity.”

A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on June 4, 2015 in New York City. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed approximately 170 points lower today after news that the country of Greece would not make a loan payment due Friday, among other reasons. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images